The Night Tripper mentally decelerated, catching bits of psychobabble sloganeering as Linda’s monologue wound down. Knowing that she would expect him to respond, he made brief mental notes to contact and placate his lonelies with excuses for his absence, then smiled and said, “I let you go on like that without interjecting questions because such thinking is living in the problem, not the solution. You’ve got to be able to exposit facts, gauge them for their basic truths and nuances, solicit my feedback, accept it or reject it, then move on the next fact. You’ve obviously read every lunatic and well-intentioned self-help book ever written, and it’s mired you down with a great deal of useless food for thought. Give me facts.”
Linda flushed, clenched her jaw and slammed the arms of her chair. “Facts,” she said. “You want facts, then I’ll give you facts. Fact: I’m lonely. Fact: I’m horny. Fact: I just met a very interesting man. Fact: I can tell that he’s turned on to me. Fact: He’s mooning for his estranged wife and will probably not hit on yours truly, as much as he’d like to. Fact: I’m pissed off about it.”
Havilland smiled. The litany sounded like his fish swallowing a huge chunk of bait. “Tell me about the man. Facts, physical and otherwise, then your conclusions.”
Linda smoothed the hem of her skirt and smiled back. “All right. He’s about forty and very large, with intense gray eyes and dark brown hair, sort of unkempt. Ruddy complexion. His clothes are out of style. He’s funny and arrogant and sarcastic. He’s very smart, but there’s nothing contrived or academic about it. He just has it. He’s a natural.”
At Linda’s last words the Doctor felt his fish gobble the bait, then inexplicably start to chew through the line. When he spoke, his voice sounded disembodied, as if it had been filtered through an echo chamber. “He has it? He’s a natural? Those aren’t facts, Linda. Be more specific.”
“Don’t get angry,” Linda said. “You wanted conclusions.”
Havilland leaned back in his chair, feeling his own line snap with the realization that he had displayed anger. “I’m sorry I raised my voice,” he said. “Sometimes nonspecific information makes me angry.”
“Don’t apologize, Doctor. You know human emotions better than I do.”
“Yes. More facts then, please.”
Linda stared at her clenched hands, then counted facts on her fingers. “He’s a cop, he’s proud to a fault, he’s lonely. He—oh shit, he just has it.”
Havilland felt barbed-wire hooks gouge his jugular, Linda’s beauty the hook wielder. Her voice supplied a verbal gouging that honed the hooks to razor sharpness. “I just don’t feel factual about this man, Doctor. It’s weird meeting him so soon after entering therapy, and nothing will probably come of it, but my only facts are my intuitions. Doctor, are you all right?”
Havilland stared through Linda to a mental chessboard he had constructed to resurrect his professional cool. Kings, queens, and knights toppled; and in the wake of their fall he was able dredge up a smile and a calm voice. “I’m sorry, Linda. One of my little bouts of vertigo. I’m also sorry for impugning your intuitions. One thing struck me when you were describing this fellow, and that’s that he sounds very much like your size forty-four sweater fantasy man. Has that occurred to you?”
Linda covered her mouth and laughed. “Maybe the Rolling Stones were wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re obviously not a rock fan,” Linda said. “I was referring to an old Stones tune called ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ Although they could be right, because if Lloyd-poo doesn’t want to be had, then I’m sure that he will not be had. That’s part of his charm.”
Havilland made a steeple and brought it up to his face, framing Linda inside the triangle. “How has he affected your fantasy life?”
Linda gave the Doctor a rueful smile. “You don’t miss much. Yes, this man is the basic forty-four sweater prototype; yes, he possesses that certain aura of violence I mentioned earlier; yes, I have cast him as the man who watches my gory home movies with me. I also like the fact that he’s a cop. And you know why? Because he doesn’t judge me for being a prostitute. Cops and hookers work the same street, so to speak.”
Collapsing the steeple into his lap, the Doctor said, “For the record, Linda, you’ve made a great deal of progress in only three sessions. So much so that I’m considering a rather avant garde visual aid session a week or so down the line. Would you be up for that?”
“Sure. You’re the doctor.”
“Yes,” Havilland said, “I am. And doctors have certain results that they must achieve. Mine involve confronting my counselee’s most hideous secrets and fears, taking them through their green doors and beyond their beyonds. You know that your confrontations are going to be particularly painful, don’t you, Linda?”
Linda stood up and adjusted the pleats in her skirt, then slung her handbag over her shoulder. “No pain, no gain. I’m tough, Doctor. I can handle all the truth you can hit me with. Friday at ten-thirty?”
Havilland got to his feet and took Linda’s hand. “Yes. One thing before you go. What were your parents wearing at the time of their deaths?”
Linda held the doctor’s hand while she pondered the question. Finally she said, “My father was wearing khaki pants, a plaid lumberjack shirt and a Dodger baseball cap. I remember the pictures the policemen showed me. The detectives were amazed that he could blow his brains out and still keep the cap on his head. My mother was doing part-time practical nursing then, and she was wearing a white nurse’s uniform. Why?”
Havilland lowered her hand. “Symbolic therapy. Thank you for digging up such an unpleasant memory.”
“No pain, no gain,” Linda said as she waved good-bye.
Alone in his office with the scent of Linda’s perfume, the Night Tripper wondered why validation of his most audacious move should cause such a bizarre reaction. He played back the session in his mind and got nothing but a static hiss that sounded like an air-raid siren about to screech its doom warning. Reflexively, he grabbed his desk phone and dialed one of his pawn’s numbers, getting a recorded message: “Hi, lover, this is Sherry! I’m out right now, but if you want to party or just rap, talk to the machine. Bye!”
He put down the receiver, knowing immediately that he had made a mistake. Sherry Shroeder lived in the Valley. He had made a toll call that would appear on his phone bill. Havilland took a deep breath and closed his eyes, searching for a train of thought to provide a counteraction to the blunder. It arrived in the form of facts: the remaining Junior Miss Cosmetics files were boring. They were boring because they detailed unimaginative sleaze. Thus a higher class line of confidential dirt should be procured. The Avonoco Fiberglass Company had a class two security rating. The Alchemist had said, “If you cut a fart they’ve got a file on you. They hire lots of parolees and work furlough inmates as part of an L.A. County kickback scam.” The L.A.P.D. file on their security chief had described him as a compulsive gambler with a history of psychiatric counseling. Choice meat for Thomas Goff. Choicer meat for a trained pshychiatrist.
The Night Tripper locked up his office and took the elevator down to the bank of payphones in the lobby. He was leafing through the Yellow Pages when the reason for his erratic behavior stunned him with its implications of cheap emotion: he was jealous of Linda Wilhite’s attraction to Lloyd Hopkins.
16
LLOYD spent the morning at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Substation, reading over the report filed by the team of detectives who had searched Marty Bergen’s apartment.
The report ran a total of eight pages, and contained both the officers’ observations regarding the apartment’s condition and a six page inventory of items found on the premises. There was no mention of the personnel files or any other official police document, and nothing that pointed to Jack Herzog or his murder/suicide/disappearance. What emerged was a clipped word portrait of an alcoholic ex-cop reaching the end of his tether.
On the ambiguous pretext of a “rout
ine check,” the detectives had learned from Bergen’s landlady that she had not seen her tenant in over a week, and that in her opinion he was “holed up swacko in some motel on the Strip.” The state of Bergen’s apartment confirmed this appraisal. Empty scotch bottles were strewn across the floor, and there were no clothes or toilet articles to be found. All four rooms reeked of booze and waste, and a portable typewriter lay smashed to pieces on the kitchen floor.
The officers had followed the landlady’s advice and had checked every motel and cocktail bar on the length of the Sunset Strip, showing Bergen’s Big Orange Insider byline photo to every desk clerk and bartender they encountered. Many recognized Bergen as a frequent heavy binger, but none had seen him in over two weeks. Deciding to sit on the information before assigning L.A.P.D. detectives to search for the ex-cop/writer, Lloyd drove to West L.A. and his last remaining uncharted link to the whole twisted mess, wondering if his motives were entirely professional.
Linda Wilhite opened her door on the second knock, catching Lloyd in the act of straightening his necktie. Pointing him inside, she looked at her watch and said, “Noon. Fourteen hours after my call, and you’re here in person. Got a good reason?”
Lloyd sat down on a floral patterned sofa. “I came to cop a plea,” he said. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you, and I—”
Linda silenced him by leaning over and adjusting the knot in his tie. “And you want something. Right?”
“Right.”
“So tell me,” Linda said, sitting down beside him.
Lloyd gave her an unrepentent stare. “Dr. John Havilland put me on to you, unconsciously. I saw those pictures of you in his outer office. Then he—”
Linda grabbed his arm. “What!”
“The framed photographs of you. Don’t you know about that?”
Linda shook her head angrily, then sadly. “That poor, wonderful man. I told him about this arty-farty picture book I posed for, and he went out and bought it. How sad. I figured he was some sort of ascetic asexual, then this morning I told him about a man I’m attracted to, and he freaked out. I’ve never seen anyone so jealous.”
“He blurted your name when I commented on the pictures,” Lloyd said. “And he obviously takes them down before he sees you. Havilland counsels lots of criminal types. In the course of my investigation I blundered onto his name and decided to exploit his expertise in matters of the criminal psyche. As I suspected, he had his own underworld grapevine. He queried his source and came up with a man who, along with Thomas Goff, sold Stanley Rudolph some art objects. I snuck into Rudolph’s pad and found your name in his phonebook. Even though Rudolph himself doesn’t know Goff, this anonymous man does. The whole Rudolph connection was a weird bunch of information and misinformation, which doesn’t alter the fact that Havilland’s source knows Goff.”
Lloyd paused when he saw that Linda’s face had become a mask of rage. Lowering his voice, he continued. “Havilland is legally protected by a shitload of statutes regarding professional privilege. He does not have to reveal the name of his source, and all my instincts tell me that no amount of coercion would move him to divulge the name of Goff’s cohort.”
Lloyd put his hand on Linda’s shoulder. She cringed at his touch, then batted his hand away and hissed, “There are people who can’t be coerced, Hopkins, and the doctor is one of them. He can’t be coerced because unlike you, he has principles. There are also people who can’t be manipulated, and even though I’m a whore, I’m one of them. Do you honestly think that I’d manipulate information out of a man who wants to help me and give it to a man who at best wants to fuck me? You want an addition to your epithet list, Sergeant? How about ‘uncaring manipulative sleazebag’?”
Seeing red, Lloyd walked out of the apartment and down to the street and his unmarked cruiser. Ten minutes later he was sitting in Dr. John Havilland’s outer office, staring at the photographs of Linda Wilhite and asking his seldom sought God not to let him do anything stupid.
The Doctor appeared just as the red throbbing behind Lloyd’s eyes began to subside. He was ushering an elderly woman wearing a “Save the Whales” T-shirt out of his private office, cooing into her ear as she checked the contents of her purse. When he saw Lloyd, he said, “One moment, Sergeant,” issued a final good-bye to his patient, then turned and laughed. “That very rich woman thinks that she can communicate telepathically with whales. What can I do for you? Have you made any progress in your investigation?”
Lloyd shook his head and spoke with a deliberate slowness. “No. Your source was somewhat inaccurate in his information. I questioned Stanley Rudolph. He has no knowledge, guilty or otherwise, of Thomas Goff. His primary source of stolen goods is a black man who works by himself. Rudolph bought goods from a solo white man only once, sometime last year. You said that your source met Goff at a singles bar. Did he tell you the name of it?”
Havilland sighed and sat down in an armchair across from Lloyd. “No, he didn’t. To be frank, Sergeant, the young man has a drug problem, an addiction that sometimes involves blackouts. His memory isn’t always completely trustworthy.”
“Yet you believe that he knows Goff?”
“Yes.”
“And you credit his statement that he has no knowledge of Goff’s whereabouts and no knowledge regarding the liquor store homicides?”
Havilland hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
Keeping his voice deliberately slow, Lloyd said, “No, you don’t. You’re shielding someone who knows something hot about Goff, and you’re scared. You want to tell me what you know, but you don’t want to compromise your ethics and jeopardize your patient’s well being. I understand these things. But understand me, Doctor. You’re my only shot. We’re dealing with mass murder here, not petty neuroses. You have to tell me his name, and I think you know it.”
“No,” Havilland said. “That’s absolute.”
“Will you reconsider over a period of twenty-four hours? I’ll have an attorney present when I question the man, and he won’t know that you informed on him. I’ll concoct a story that would satisfy a genius.”
Havilland lowered his eyes. “God damn it, I said no!”
Lloyd felt his slow-motion strategy burst. He jammed his hands into his front pockets, closing them around open handcuff ratchets and a metal studded sap. Staring straight at the doctor, he squeezed the concealed weaponry so hard that the pain forced his words out in a wince. “You fuck with me and I’ll hit you with an I.R.S. audit and more writs, petitions, subpoenas, and court orders than you thought existed. I’ll initiate motions requesting the case files of every court-referred patient who ever crossed your door. I’ll hire shyster lawyers out of my own pocket and keep them on retainer just to dream up ways to hassle you. I’ll have bad-ass nigger vice cops keep your office under surveillance and scare the shit out of the rich neurotics you feed from. Twenty-four hours. You’ve got my number.”
A red tide propelled Lloyd out of the office. When he took his hands from his pockets, he saw that they were bleeding.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Havilland walked into his private office and removed an array of bait from his wall safe. Ten thousand dollars in a brown paper bag and a newly typed psychiatric report accompanied by a snapshot. He placed the report in his top desk drawer, then looked at his watch. One-thirty. He had six hours until his next move. Leaning back in his chair, the Night Tripper closed his eyes and tried to will a dreamless sleep.
He succeeded and failed.
Sleep came, interspersed with semi-conscious moments that he knew to be his memory. As each image passed through him he felt like a surgical bonesaw was slicing his body in two, leaving him the choice of going with his symbolic past or of drifting into the cloud cover of anesthesia. Off to his left was sleep; off to his right was a blood-spattered corkboard equipped with arm and legholes, a rigor-mortised ankle encircled by a steel manacle, and the Bronx ferris wheel spinning off its axis. Full consciousness was a pinpoint of light betwee
n his eyes, an escape hatch that could trigger full sleep if concentrated upon in tandem with recitation of his mantra, patria sanctorum. Three roads inward: to wakefulness, to oblivion, to his childhood void. Feeling fearless, the Night Tripper succumbed to memory and let his right side disengage.
A huge magnifying glass descended on the void, serving up details: “McEvoy-D Block,” etched on the manacle; gouged and cauterized arteries marking the ankle; father whispering in his ear as the ferris wheel reached its apex, suspending them above blocks of Puerto Rican tenements. Straining to read the lips of the people traversing below him, he caught long snatches of conversation and shock waves of laughter. Then his two sides fused.
Havilland awoke, refreshed, at six-forty-five. His yawn became a smile when the new void embellishments passed the credibility test by returning to his conscious mind. His smile widened when he realized that his one-on-one with Lloyd Hopkins was the catalyst that had supplied the fresh details. Thus fortified by sleep and memory, he picked up his bag of money, locked the office, and drove to Malibu and the acquisition of data.
The rendezvous point was a long stretch of parking blacktop overlooking the beach. Havilland left his car in the service area of a closed gas station on the land side of the Pacific Coast Highway and took the tunnel underpass across to the bank of lighted pay phones adjoining the spot where he was to meet the Avonoco Fiberglass security chief. He checked his watch and walked to the railing: 8:12 P.M., the last remnants of an amber sun turning the ocean pink. Savoring the moment, he watched the ball of fire meld into a pervasive light blue. When the blue died into a dark rush of waves, he walked to the phone booth nearest the railing and dialed the number of his actress pawn.